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“Your lips are red and weird.” He reaches for me, then retracts his hand. “I’m going to tell your mum.”
I grab his wrist with my sweaty hand and dig my nails in. “N-no…she’ll punish me… I’ll be fine…”
“You don’t look fine.”
“It…will go away…”
“Are you sure?”
No. Because this is the first time I’ve gotten this dizzy, but that’s okay. If it means he’ll just continue to hold me.
“It’ll go away if you keep me in this position,” I lie.
Daniel carefully removes my hair from my face. “If you’re allergic to peaches, why would you eat them?”
“B-because I like them.”
“You’re weird, Nicole.”
I’ve been called pretty and smart and a good girl, but never weird. I think I like that better.
I like not being so perfect.
“I…I have toys… My favorite doll and snow globe are behind you in the secret…d-drawer…”
“I don’t think you should be talking about toys right now.” His brow is furrowed again and I don’t like that. I want to see his dimples instead.
“G-get them…my toys…”
“For what?”
“J-just do it.”
“I think I should go find your mum.”
“N-no…please… I told you, sh-she’ll punish me.”
“Then you shouldn’t have done something you’d be punished for.”
“You do that all the time a-at school.” It’s why I noticed him in the first place. He often gets sent to the headmaster’s office for pulling pranks and generally having fun.
I liked that. The way he laughed and didn’t care what the grown-ups said about him.
I wished I could be like him.
I wished I wasn’t lucky and didn’t have to talk a certain way, walk a certain way, and breathe a certain way.
“That’s because I don’t like rules,” he says. “But I don’t go hurting myself.”
“I-it doesn’t hurt.”
“You look and sound like you’re in pain.”
“It’ll get better if…” I swallow, but my tongue feels too big for my mouth, like it’ll roll out onto the ground.
Daniel stares at me as if that’s exactly what’s happened, then he wipes the side of my mouth, where some peach-flavored drool escaped.
If my cheeks could get any hotter, they would. This is so messy and wrong, and Daniel shouldn’t witness me like this.
